Hello. Welcome back to Survival Notes. My name is Jon Murphy, psychiatric nurse practitioner, and it's good to be here on Survival Notes. title of today's episode is When Structure Feels Unsafe. In my provisional modality, if you will, for the purposes of psychotherapy, I've determined eight different, what I call nervous system roles. Talked about this on past episodes. Then I want to introduce a couple others today, the watcher, as well as the operator.
So for myself, I know that a major part in my survival story was becoming competent in Behavioralism, developing structure for myself, those sort of ADHD tools, applying these to my life and seeing the benefits, and that is something that I very much have noticed is not a universal trait. Many patients of mine with ADHD would fail to apply these behavioral tools. We're thinking about attachment theory. Some of you may be familiar with the terms avoidance or anxiety.
However, this duality, I think, is a little incomplete. Not only do we lack context of group psychology, but we also fail to understand underlying pathology and ultimately avoidance, depending on the stimulus and the environmental factors, is a very triggering place, a very anxious place.
So we need a more complex understanding with the reinforcement matrix I think I've, uh, figured out a system that at least has worked very well with my patients, and I'm looking forward to introducing it to a broader audience, and hopefully it can help people in their survival story heal and understand what they've been through. So they can move forward. Now, the operator. So we have to think about growing up and being young and dependent. We naturally need to feel bonded within a group dynamic.
So when we're thinking about the group, are there things that we're doing within the group? That find our place, meaning if it's a dysfunctional environment, the group is relatively more stable by playing a certain role. This role, depending on the child or the, person how is this role played? So the operator. We can think of as someone that has learned to relate to others by suppressing some form of self.
So we can think of emotional suppression, wearing a mask and dissociating or pushing away emotions in favor of wearing a sort of performative mask or an operational mask. So what does that mean? Well, the operator plays a role within a group, so these types of people are gonna feel very comfortable in jobs. They're gonna feel very comfortable in friend groups where they have a role to play, but they don't love the spotlight.
in other words, they're employee of the month, but when the workplace starts to fall apart, it's like, Hey, I just work here, man. So these people, when they sense dynamics shifting, they'll feel uncomfortable. And they also, value their independence greatly. So their survival is tied to this operational identity. These people feel threatened by structure or threatened by dependency because the operator is dependent on a group, but they had to do so at the expense of their emotional self.
When it comes to being consistent with things or even things that involve thinking, 'cause these people are feelers and intuitive operators. The other mode I wanted to talk about today is the watcher, and the watcher is similar, another classically avoidant type. The only thing I suppose that is gonna be effective is if you make yourself small and quiet so you learn to belong through invisibility.
Structure is gonna be hard for these people because they've really had to develop, individuality It's a very solitary place to be. These types of, the lone wolf, the types of people that, maybe run in subcultures that identify as different. I think of Dungeons and Dragons and that type of thing, although it's becoming more mainstream now.
Nonetheless, they're gonna identify with marginalized groups and that is survival that does this because you learn to relate to people within a group setting by being small and being invisible. So what does the nervous system do? Well, the nervous system sends signals that cue to us that we're not safe, fight flight responses, anxiety.
Ultimately the safety is gonna be tied to assimilation, into group dynamics, interpersonal dynamics, dependency, and if we do so in a group setting, and we feel comfortable in this mode, and now we're an adult, we no longer are dependent. These old ways of doing things are very challenging. For an operator, being emotionally vulnerable, or if they have too much responsibility, the nervous system will fire off.
in relationships when things get closer, they're probably gonna experience anxiety as well. The watcher is gonna have trouble with relationships, period. If you identify with any of these traits, I think that it's just a different path to recovery, which is why I wanted to create this podcast, to show that not everyone's road is the same.
We all have a unique individual experience, but humans are complex to a point, not complex beyond our understanding to look at this in a way to help identify these different paths, and I think I've done that with the survival modes. When does anxiety come up for you and the operator on the watcher, they're not gonna be able to identify, they might not even feel it. It might be hard to even identify that they have an issue at all because they've had to be in a group that was probably hostile.
It was a group that they couldn't be emotionally vulnerable with in order to belong and develop these bonds. I think that's gonna do it for today. Once again, my name's Jon Murphy. This is Survival Notes, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and this podcast is brought to you by my private practice focus path. You can visit@www.my focus path.com. There you'll find my blog. Reach out, say hello, and let's keep this conversation going. Until next time, we'll see you later.